Dare to 'dare'

I often find it interesting the way creatures with just one type of sex chromosomes tend to intimidate us, boys, with two types of sex chromosomes.

One not so fine evening, when the rain God was lavishly bestowing outdoors and the electricity department was showing its wrath indoors. I was sitting in the glum classroom with about ten of my classmates cursing the gods and abusing the electricity department. It was then that the supposedly brightest of the fairer sex had a bright idea of playing ‘truth and dare’.

For those who are not familiar with the game. It is the stupidest of the stupid games one might have ever heard of. It involves spinning a pen or a bottle, which decides the ‘Bakra’. The ‘Bakra’ gets an option to choose between answering a question from his life and performing a daring act. Either of the choices turns out to be equally daring and is usually decided by the meanest of the group. Another strange feature of the game is that you are expected to have high moral values and a deep respect for privacy when dealing with a ‘Bakri’, while the poor ‘Bakra’ is stripped and sheared in front of guffawing vixens.

With that basic information about the game, one can imagine the cynicism with which the idea met. The fairer sex is everything but fair. With the unfair argument of male domination and presumptions, we were forced into indulging in the game that makes Russian Roulette a safer option.

At last the pen was swung into motion. After what seemed to be ages of suspense, the pen slowed down and then ultimately stopped. The cap had been removed to enable free motion and the refill tip pointed towards its chosen ‘Bakra’.

“Truth or dare?” throats that fell dry due to anticipation seemed to have been recharged

.

The ‘Bakra’ quite understandably dared to dare rather than facing inconvenient questions. We were still racking out brains for an appropriate act when a pesky pigtailed girl came up with, “Why don’t you propose the girl sitting next to you!” a few ponytailed nods and the fate of the ‘Bakra’ was fixed.

The shy, timid, bespectacled, curly haired, introvert ‘Bakra’ on his knees while the arrogant,  overconfident, suave girl towered over him.

“myself Har….” he began

“Ahem” she interrupted “you see your phrase is improperly articulated. It should be ‘I am Harsh’.  In case you want to sound different you could say ‘I respond to the name Harsh.’ But what do you mean by saying ‘myself Harsh’.

I smirked, the terrorist had found a new ‘Bakra’ that day and she was bound to make a mince meat out of him.

“myself is a compound personal pronoun. It can be used as an emphatic pronoun as in ‘I typed the letter myself.’ or as reflexive pronoun as in ‘I hurt myself.’“

For the next half an hour we had a free lecture on compound personal pronouns and all of its avatars. Perhaps it would have continued longer, if it was not for the rain God who took pity on us and stopped the rain; or perhaps even he was terrified and decided to stay high up in the safety of heavens, rather than being terrorised by a terrorist with her grammar lectures.